YouTube. The, er, lovable West London team/Russian billionaire's plaything becomes the first Premier League football club to provide exclusive content to the popular video-sharing site.">
YouTube. The, er, lovable West London team/Russian billionaire's plaything becomes the first Premier League football club to provide exclusive content to the popular video-sharing site.">
YouTube. The, er, lovable West London team/Russian billionaire's plaything becomes the first Premier League football club to provide exclusive content to the popular video-sharing site.">

YouTube signs for Chelsea

Not content with hoovering up the best young talent to populate their reserves, Chelsea has now swooped to conquer YouTube. The, er, lovable West London team/Russian billionaire's plaything becomes the first Premier League football club to provide exclusive content to the popular video-sharing site.

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YouTube. The, er, lovable West London team/Russian billionaire's plaything becomes the first Premier League football club to provide exclusive content to the popular video-sharing site.
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Not content with hoovering up the best young talent to populate their reserves, Chelsea has now swooped to conquer YouTube. The, er, lovable West London team/Russian billionaire's plaything becomes the first Premier League football club to provide exclusive content to the popular video-sharing site.

The Blues will have their own channel - www.youtube.com/chelseafc - showing news updates and archive content. (It can't show live footage, because that would contravene the Premier League's broadcast rights. For now.)

It's a significant move on two, not wholly unrelated fronts.

First up, YouTube's big brother Google is keen to see the video-sharing site go legit. So as copyright-busting screengrabs are given the old heave-ho, expect to see more corporate deals of this nature (to supplement home-video clips of people falling over, obviously).

And don’t be surprised to see other big sports teams following Chelski's lead.

The behemoths at the pinnacle of the Premier League are already champing at the bit, chafing against the collective bargaining for TV rights the FA imposes on them. They'd love to have their own lucrative TV channels, and as the gap between the tinterweb and the telly closes, channels such as YouTube provide an interesting halfway house.

Google swallows YouTube, Chelsea continue to devour the world. Whatever happened to the internet being the great leveller?